The place is unfinished and long since ruined, the smell of fish has faded away and the archaeologists have arrived. It’s blustery and I turn my collar up against the wind that blows down where the land slopes gently to the water. On this hazy day the Rif mountains can only just be made out to the south; even the big Bolonia dune – close by – is a little shrouded.

Long since ruined – this old city saw its heyday under Claudius and was already a pile of rubble fifteen centuries ago. I walk along the wooden walkway, reluctant to linger in the cold. The emperor occupies his pedestal amidst the columns of the Basilica. Down onto the slabs of the decumanus maximus and past the Macellum and the baths – then up to the half moon of the amphitheatre and its tiered stalls; half a bull ring on the hillside.

After that the three temples – to Juno, to Jupiter and to Minerva and after those another, to Isis. The gods overlook the forum, the tabernae, the curia and Tabularium and further down – right where the sand starts – is the rather prosaic reason for all this Roman fuss; the factory that churned out the product that produced the wealth that produced the temples. Fish sauce. More

I think that might be a Lamborghini down there. Or a Ferrari – I wouldn’t know the difference from this high up. I’ve seen a Porsche, plenty of Gucci, horse-drawn carriages. Down there. With the great unwashed.

…burn baby…

It isn’t for me though. Not tonight. The streets with their clutter and noise and ordinary people. In Ferraris. I hang aloft up here with my stemmed glass and survey like the birds that fascinate me above Tarifa. Mine is an imperial perspective. Decadent. Faintly ridiculous.

…burn baby burn…

I’m not alone. K clinks my glass and we laugh. We are enjoying ourselves; brushing against the edges of mania – happy. We are bathed in changing colours; and we are wet.

Regular readers will be aware of the tendency that Tarifeños have to string a celebration out – to squeeze every last possible drop of moisture out of any opportunity that blows in on the Levante to throw a bit of a party, to flog the living shit out of a dead horse named Celebration.

After a seemingly endless Feria in September followed by very respectable turn outs for Halloween and a couple of churchified thingamibobs I didn’t understand through November and December, a determined effort to mark each of the twelve days of Christmas and the Andalucia bank holiday in February half the town, it would seem, disappears up the road to Cadiz for Carnaval in the spring when that city goes ape shit for three weekends (and the two intervening weeks).